What does being a major signed heavy metal musician and an amazing salesperson have to do with each other?
Everything.
Dale Dupree is widely known as the Copier Warrior as well as being the host of the Selling Local Podcast and leader of the Sales Rebellion. Dale understands personal branding in a way that many in the corporate world do not.
On a recent episode of The B2B Revenue Acceleration Podcast, Dale joined me to discuss personal branding. Particularly the critical need for authenticity, transparency, and creativity.
While it may cost you in the short term, these branding traits are critical. They will set you apart and drive more sales.
He explains how developing his authentic brand has led to more closed deals, the push back he has received from corporate culture, despite record sales, his best practices for personal brand building, and how all mistakes are good.
An Authentic Brand Means More Closed Deals
One of Dale’s major steps in building his personal brand has been hosting the Selling Local Podcast.
He started that show because he wanted to start speaking to his audience more, his audience being buyers.
He wanted them to see deeper into his thought process as a salesperson to build a rapport with them.
So in selling local, he:
- Tells his stories about his sales triumphs and failures.
- Talks about his theories behind sales.
- Talks about things that typically you would only want other salespeople to hear.
Transparency and vulnerability build better relationships. People buy from those they like and trust.
Dale Dupree
Through his creativity and transparency, he’s gained the title: Leader of the Sales Rebellion, which he says there will be a big announcement very soon.
All of his brand building has been good for both inbound and outbound. People know who he is and he’s gained their trust so they are more likely to reach out or respond well when approached.
Corporate Culture Pushes Back
It’s important to realize that if you are not careful, you can lose who you are. You can get lost in the bullpen. And many companies would prefer that.
Corporate culture wants to control how they look to the marketplace, while forgetting that the maretplace wants to do business with actual human beings.
Dale Dupree
By refusing to bow to that pressure, all while investing in himself, Dale showed buyers of the time and effort he would put into serving them appropriately and it wasn’t long before he was a major player.
Even when Dale was bringing in large sales numbers, there was still a pushback against his personal style and flair of authenticity.
Leaders would even tell him “Hey, we love your numbers, but we don’t like how you’re getting them. So we’re going to have to ask you to stop.”
He chose not to listen, and his business has grown because of it.
Personal Brand Building Best Practices
How do you build a brand that is authentic to who you are, creative and appealing?
A personal brand is not just your opinion or your way of looking at life, it’s also the ability to creatively communicate yourself to everyone.
Dale Dupree
Dale’s 5 pieces of advice are:
- Find mentors and creative people to surround yourself with.
- Hire people that you look up to to help you and hold you accountable and help you communicate.
- Have a healthy pride in the way you portray yourself authentically and creatively.
- Make a lot of content.
LinkedIn is an amazing platform that too few are taking advantage of to publish content and make use of the algorithm. The secret sauce is to do the work; don’t just have a picture on your site, have 400 pieces of content that promote interaction, educate, empower, and, in a healthy way, overwhelm and indoctrinate. - Prioritize human interaction.
In every message you send on social media, you are interacting with another human being.
Your brand is the way people see you, you can’t do that without interacting with those people.
All Mistakes Are Good
The reason Dale wholeheartedly believes that all mistakes are good when creating your personal brand is because it teaches you two things:
- What specifically the marketplace doesn’t want to see.
- Who the people are in your marketplace that you don’t want to do business with
Best way to get in touch with Dale is on any of his social media channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. To get more of his content, subscribe to him on Youtube as well.
This post is based on an interview with Dale Dupree the Copier Warrior.
To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The B2B Revenue Acceleration Podcast.
If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.
